New 3PLD company Tabula secures $108 million in funding

This funding - the largest awarded to a private semiconductor company over the last decade - to support rapid customer adoption of the industry's first 3D programmable logic devices.

Earlier this week, the folks at Tabula – a privately held fabless semiconductor company and developer of the ABAX family of 3D Programmable Logic Devices (3PLDs) – announced that they have secured $108 million in Series D funding.

The thing is that it’s amazing for a private semiconductor company to get this sort of cash in the current market. I talked to Rich Wawrzyniak, who is the Senior Market Analyst for ASICs and SoCs at Semico Research. Rich told me that the way in which Tabular have created this new technology – along with all of the supporting tools and infrastructure – and have brought it to the market is very impressive. He says that the fact Tabula was awarded $108 in funding is a validation of both their technology and their ability to execute on plan.

Tabula will use the new capital to accelerate production of their 3PLD ABAX product family, expand customer and partner support infrastructures, and further next-generation product development to extend their presence in the rapidly growing programmable logic sector. The financing was led by Crosslink Capital and DAG Ventures. Existing investors, Balderton Capital, Benchmark Capital, Greylock Partners, Integral Capital, and NEA also participated in this round

“The programmable logic market is seeing tremendous growth driven by the build out of the telecommunications infrastructure. This infrastructure build is necessary to keep pace with the global demand for more bandwidth to support smartphone usage for accessing data and video online.” said Dennis Segers, CEO of Tabula. “This funding represents a resounding validation of our breakthrough Spacetime 3D programmable logic technology and a vote of confidence for the Tabula team in its ability to bring about both technological innovation as well as business innovation to customers. We will continue to build on our customer momentum by increasing volume shipments of our ABAX 3PLD product family. With the disruption our Spacetime architecture is bringing to the market, we will take programmable devices where they have never gone before and intend on becoming a global semiconductor market leader."

“Our chips and software are in customers’ hands, and our Spacetime technology is delivering on its promise in the marketplace. This enormous infusion of capital provides the remaining ingredient for us to transform the electronics industry,” notes Steve Teig, Founder and CTO of Tabula

“Tabula’s Spacetime technology addresses the problems at the heart of the programmable logic market today by delivering unprecedented capabilities at unmatched cost points compared to FPGAs.” said Gary Hromadko, Venture Partner of Crosslink Capital. “Tabula represents the largest market opportunity of any private semiconductor company in the industry today. This new infusion of capital will allow Tabula to aggressively execute on their customer adoption and product development plans.”

Committed to bringing business and technology innovation to the semiconductor industry, Tabula recently completed the roll-out of its 40nm ABAX family of 3PLDs supported by the Stylus development software. Stylus delivers Spacetime’s 3D Architecture breakthrough price/performance advantages to ASIC and FPGA designers, all while maintaining a familiar design flow. The first design software suite in the PLD industry made available in the cloud, Stylus eliminates IT hassle while enabling real-time, on-site-like, technical support.

“Tabula is well positioned to capitalize on the growing migration of ASIC and ASSP towards programmable logic devices.” said Dave Strohm, Partner of Greylock Partners. “With a proven world class management team, products that are leading in a high-growth PLD market and shipping to a growing list of Tier 1 customers, this round of funding will help drive their customer expansion and increase their technological lead. We look forward to their continued success.”

“Tabula is a visionary company with key factors critical in achieving success; an unbounded $70B market opportunity, a breakthrough technology and a proven management team.” said Bruce Dunlevie, General Partner of Benchmark Capital. “We look forward to supporting them in their next stage of growth as we believe they will become a clear and dominant leader in the semiconductor industry with unstoppable force.”

Industry veterans in the analyst and editorial community have weighed in on how Tabula’s technological and business disruption will impact the semiconductor industry. Please visit www.tabula.com for in-depth commentary.

About Tabula
Tabula is a privately held fabless semiconductor company developing 3D Programmable Logic Devices. Its ABAX family of 3PLDs, based on Tabula's patented Spacetime architecture, and supported by its Stylus development software, sets new density, performance, and affordability benchmarks for programmable logic, memory, and signal processing. Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Tabula has assembled a leadership team consisting of industry veterans and successful entrepreneurs. The company is backed by top-tier investors with a long-term view toward enduring market leadership.

Finally someone besides me has picked up on the advantages of multiport rams. The fmax of the rams is more than twice the typical FPGA so two rams with some gating logic can be cycled in what would be a typical clock period. The rams hold data without use of dedicated registers and every possible Boolean function of the address bits is available(typical CPLD